Re: Bug free programs

[Mark H Weaver]

Ian Grant <address@hidden> writes:

> On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 8:57 PM, <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Note that the 42 minutes here is a dumbed-down scheme interpreter 
>> written in C building/boostrapping the compiler. The guile compiler
>> (the Scheme one) is quite a bit faster than that.
>
> I know, but it's not necessary. Guile could take the scheme code which
> implements the efficient compiler, and just print out the C code
> (which JIT compiles the machine code) implementing that bytecode
> compiler.

Are you suggesting that we compile our Scheme code to C, include that
in our distribution, and then users would start by compiling that
(non-source) C code?  If so, I'm surprised to hear you suggest that,
given your concern over Thompson viruses (which I share, incidentally).
A Thompson virus could be hiding in this intermediate C code that would
be very hard to audit.

I, for one, am very glad that unlike many self-hosting compilers, Guile
is bootstrapped entirely from source code, with just one exception:
psyntax-pp.scm is generated from psyntax.scm, but it's fairly close to
the source code and quite readable.  Incidentally, I put a great deal of
effort into making sure it was readable.

> See the thunder.pdf I sent when I first proposed this idea:
>
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2014-08/msg00064.html

If you want me to read it, can you please email it as plain text?

     Mark